Tip of the Moment

Troubleshooting

Updated 5/8/16

When things go wrong with OneNote, as they occasionally may, there
are a few steps you can take to remedy the situation.

SafeBoot

One quick troubleshooting step you can take with OneNote is to
start it with the /safeboot switch. Start | Run | Onenote
/safeboot. OneNote will start and present you with a couple of
troubleshooting options. One of these options is to clear the
OneNote cache (see below) and the other is to clear the customized
user settings, which basically resets OneNote back to the default.

Note that this option doesn't work with OneNote 2016 or later.

Delete the Cache

OneNote uses a local cache file to improve performance,
reliability and sharing. All work in OneNote is actually done
to the local cache file rather than the actual data file and then
those changes are quietly sync'd to the data file in the background.

Sometimes the cache in OneNote 2007 or 2010 can get corrupted and the
best way to troubleshoot it is to delete it. Assuming all of
the changes you have made have already been committed to the data
file deleting the cache will not lose any data - but if you're at
the point where you're deleting the cache file you're probably
fairly desperate anyhow so a little bit of data loss may be an
acceptable price to pay to get the application back on its feet.

The cache file is typically found in the: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneNote\12.0
folder if you're running Vista or the C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\application
data\local\Microsoft\OneNote\12.0 folder for Windows XP. For
OneNote 2010 just change the "12" to a "14".

With
OneNote closed, using Windows Explorer go to that folder, find the
OneNoteOfflineCache.onecache file and either rename it, move it or
delete it. I usually recommend renaming it so that if this fix
doesn't work and you decide you want to you can always rename it
back.

Again, if you have changes in the cache file that have NOT been
committed to the primary file you'll lose them if you delete the
cache file. Usually best to rename it to something else like
"OneNoteOfflineCache.oldcache". If letting OneNote create the
new cache solves the problem and you haven't lost any important data
then you can always just delete the .oldcache file later.

When you start OneNote it will automatically recreate the file;
hopefully without whatever corruption caused the problem.

Print to OneNote on 64-Bit Operating Systems

One issue that comes up increasingly is the problem of printing
to OneNote when you have a 64-bit operating system installed.
For quite some time this was a problem for OneNote 2007 users who
were running on Vista or Windows 7, 64-bit. But then OneNote
PM David Rasumussen rode to the rescue
in his blog entry here...

Note that this is not an issue with the new 64-bit version of
Microsoft OneNote 2010 or later.

Where are OneNote Files Saved?

Depends slightly upon the operating system you're running
but...under your Documents (or My Documents) folder you should find
a "OneNote Notebooks" folder. Your notebooks are all in there.

If OneNote suddenly opens everything as "Read-Only" and many of
its options are greyed out that usually means that either you
haven't activated the product or you're using a Trial version of
OneNote that has expired. Check the Help menu.

If you're sure you've got the full version of OneNote (not the
trial) and you have activated it then the next thing to check is to
make sure that you have read and write permissions to the folders
and files. In Windows Explorer navigate to the folder
containing your notebooks (see above), right click the folders and
.ONE files and choose Properties, to make sure none are set to
Read-Only.

How Come My Pens are greyed out?

One of the mysteries of the OneNote universe. Pressing
Windows Key + V disables the pens toolbar in OneNote. Press it
again to reenable.

What Happened to My Custom Tags?

OneNote saves custom tags in the preferences.dat file and that
file is written on exit. If you're having a problem where you
lose your custom tags when you restart OneNote, it might be due to
Outlookt ask integration and Outlook keeping OneNote.exe running in
the background. Try closing Outlook first, then OneNote.
Then restart OneNote and see if your custom tags persisted.

I'm Getting an 0xE0000B5E error when I sync my Notebooks!

Do you have any sections with really long file names - and/or
filenames that include special characters like symbols or
underscores? If so, try taking out the symbols and see if the
problem goes away - often those symbols (or especially long section
names) can cause problems with sync.